Fixed atop the crest of a great, rolling dune was Avdotya's poised figure, every angle of her body seemingly as sharp as the blade of her mighty spear. This was the moment she had been so patiently waiting for: days- months- no, years had passed since the Davke's evisceration, since their existence had been diminished into mere written word on parchment. Now, however, it was time to bring life to those old historical tomes. From the pages would they rise, like phoenixes set ablaze with the fires of their rage they would seek their revenge upon the capitol and its fickle society. Zolin may have been ash on the wind now (his brutish dogma along with him), but there still remained a score that needed to be settled. An eye for an eye, their decree stated. Avdotya was simply executing the very law that the Day Court itself had implemented.
She smiled a wicked smile at the irony of a law meant to protect their Court, then breathed in a heavy swath of hot desert air. In that moment the viper had shed her crinkled skin as Solterra's fierce Regent and was reborn as the Davke Queen, no longer a servant to a system that so often failed its people. Seraphina, in spite of her refined political ideation, did not sway that way of thinking. Solis' desert was not meant to be ruled by a single being- it was a wild and untamable thing, much like the tribes that once flecked its sands. The tribes that - like the Davke - were now only stories to be told of.
Another breath and Avdotya was ready. She was prepared for death if their god willed it, for it would be in the name of her people who were now finding their resurrection. Her head turned just slightly to look at the horde behind her, the heat of her burning gaze focusing briefly at her side where she presumed Velorca would be. It was a fleeting second in time, but enough to affirm the cusp that they found themselves upon. Vengeance was within reach, they just had to reach for it.
"DAVKE," Came the boom her voice, sharp and demanding of their attention, "IT IS TIME TO TAKE THE BLOOD WE ARE OWED!" She fanned the flames of their tempers, pushing them to let their animosity overtake them in their pursuit of retribution. Even in her own body, the thought of what was to come cranked her adrenaline to an immense high and left her with a glistening sweat upon the black of her hide. The viciousness that swelled within her belly begged to be loosed, to tear at the throats of those who bore relations to Zolin and once served beneath his pitiful rule; she yearned to gouge her spear into their flesh and paint the pretty floors red with their blood. No, she did not care for the innocence many of them were sure to hold. They would pay for their dead boy-king's mistakes and the Davke sought only lives as atonement.
And so, with Solis' searing heat at their backs, the Davke screamed their revival. Avdotya led the ominous charge with Feliks at her side, appearing from behind them with a second to spare. Over the glowing horizon that faced Solterra's capitol, only a billowing cloud of dust bore evidence of their oncoming assault... but it soon burgeoned into a full-on blitz, their violent cries carrying on the wind until they finally tore through the palace doors.
No longer were the Davke a nightmare of the past and it was time Novus was stirred from its idle slumber.
You’re playing my game now-- @NOVUS!
AYOOO, HERE WE GO! Those who are part of the Davke, commence the destruction! Steal, kill (NPC only, please! Unless you have been given express consent by a player), maim (same rule applies to the previous point), burn- do as you will. Those within the Day Court are welcome to be part of the attack if they so choose. c: Participants are encouraged to write NPC Day Courters or Davke, so make it fun and interesting!
03-04-2018, 10:38 PM
Played by
Jeanne [PM] Posts: 399 — Threads: 81 Signos: 100
She hears them first as screams on the wind, the howls of some reanimated ghost come for its reckoning – and she sends scouts, of course. Figure out what is happening and report back. Only one of them makes it back, bloody and bruised and half-dead, gasping, gasping, gasping. Reagent Avdotya and her- the davke – they’re coming. And then nothing.
She would say that she is surprised, but she is not. Not in this court of thorns where she stands so utterly alone; she was mistaken in her trust. She was mistaken in trusting, and she should have known by the gleam in her reagent’s blood-chip eyes. She is not angry at Avdotya – there is no white-hot rage come like wildfire to consume her. She knows why the viper has come, and she knows what she desires – she knows why. But she does not care. In her mind, there is no bitterness, nor sympathy; there are no thoughts to the dead for which she has come to avenge, the wrongs done to her by Solterra’s boy-king. She cares nothing for her vengeance. She cares nothing for her rage. She cares nothing for her reagent – she cares nothing for the respect she once offered her. If she showed herself to the silver queen, she would gut her herself or die trying, and it would be no act of rage – simple necessity.
She was wrong. A miscalculation. A miscalculation she will pay for in blood.
A miscalculation she would not make twice.
There is no time to prepare – she sends the soldiers to the door to keep them at bay as long as they can. “The armory,” She tells others, “take what you can and destroy the rest. Do not give them anything more to use against us.” It is futile to send out evacuation orders while they approach – they will catch anyone she sends. There will be no chance for evacuation until they are upon the capitol, and even then, she doubts that most of their vulnerable will survive. All of her sings with urgency, with brutal pragmatism. She gives no speeches, only orders. There is no time for pretty words when death lurks ravenous on the edge of the horizon. There is no time, no time, no time – her mind clicks like clockwork. The sun throbs in the midday sky.
She burns the library herself – she will not give them the satisfaction. She sets aflame the scrolls and records, the fables, the precious accounts. She sends the past up in smoke, reduces a hundred years’ history to little more than ash and dust, and watches the embers catch in the sun.
Outside, she hears screaming.
It is not long before they bypass the soldiers, break down the door, flood into the capitol like a pack of ravenous dogs driven mad by their taste of blood – it is not long until the flames that she started are not the only ones that consume.
She slams out of the library and into the hall and finds herself facing the enemy, a spear clasped between his teeth. The enemy - some faceless assailant, some shadowed entity. He has a name, a face – certainly some ambition. She cares nothing for it. As she looks him down, only one thought remains in her mind, perfectly clear: one of them will die.
It will not be her.
He rushes at her, then, a sadistic smirk curled across his fawn lips – he thinks himself a hero. His name will go down in history, the one to slaughter the silver queen of day--
but she dances out of the reach of his spear and snatches his throat in her teeth. He flails, jerks, twists, tries to free himself of her grasp, but he does not succeed. The spear falls from his screeching lips and clatters to the ground, and, as she finally frees him, she snatches it in her own teeth. As she looks back to him, she catches a glimpse of his eyes. The rage has faded way to ashes, the cold white of unholy terror.
She slams the spear into his chest. And again. And again. And again.
He twitches, faintly, lips foaming at the edges, then falls still. Her skin runs red. She is drowning in it.
When she draws back from his frame, she is a blood-stained specter, red and cold; her lips, her teeth, the pristine white of the braids that frame her skull like a crown – all red. A baptism, or a rebirth, or a return to who she was, for now her blood hums with a familiar urgency and her mind comes crashing to a still. She feels nothing. She feels nothing. No white-hot rage, no betrayal – nothing. Idle calculation. They are under attack. They are under attack, and their attackers will see each and every one of them slaughtered like dogs. No considerations for what could have been done, and no hesitation. Her lips curl. She drops the spear, then grasps it with her mind, allows it to hover at her side. So be it, then.
She cascades up the stairs like a wraith; a few of them have descended far enough into the palace to attempt what their fellow could not accomplish.
She will not give them that, either.
One pounces on her from above, comes crashing down the stairs with war in her eyes and blood in her hair – Seraphina thinks she might have been speaking, but she cannot hear her over the wardrum pounding of her own heart. Her mind hums. She is beyond thinking, beyond feeling, beyond caring for anything at all. The fool girl lets her hooves get the better of her, and the silver queen sidesteps her with ease; when she turns to snap at her, she finds herself impaled on the spear, drowning in the red.
She does not come alone.
Snapped necks, ripped throats, bodies shoved to break on sandstone streets as they find themselves shoved through what remains of stained-glass windows they shattered themselves, dripping red red red - she dances in blood. Seraphina remains a soldier, and no time spent among palace walls has dulled her sense for the war, the war that was broken into her, the war that became her when she was young, when she was vulnerable, when she was nothing. And so she slaughters those who stand in her way with the thoughtlessness with which one might smash a fly - a brutal, apathetic efficiency, a violence spurred by nothing nothing nothing. She takes no delight in it, no disgust. With each encounter, she finds herself stained until no part of her remains untainted, no part of her pure. Someday, she knows that all that blood might weigh her down. Someday, her crimes are bound to catch up with her – all those bodies left cold and dead for the sake of one fool king’s cruelty, and now again for her own naivete. Someday, they might catch her, trap the silver like the collar spun round her neck as a noose.
They would not today.
Smoke swirls on the roof. It constricts her lungs; her sides heave with perspiration, but she does not stop running. She does not stop running until she reaches the great horn on the fortress walls and blows it, screams her response to the charcoal sky – summons all of Solterra to gather up their arms and push them back. Behind her, she hears the clatter of hooves, and swirls in a cascade of red, prepared to attack-
but her eyes fall upon a trio of panicked scouts, staring at her blood-soaked frame in horror. She watches them in cold, empty silence, little more than an impatient swish of her tail betraying her thoughts. Get on with it, then. One of them manages to speak, his voice hoarse and stumbling with fear. “They want orders downstairs, my lady. What do we do?”Uncertainty. She stares at him – have two years truly been enough time for her people to forget how to fight a war? There is nothing that can be done for that now, she thinks. Her people grew up on tales of violent glory. They expect battle to be something beautiful and glamorous, something with meaning. They expect her to save them. She cannot. “Send a small unit to evacuate the ones who cannot fight,” She hisses through bloodstained lips, her narrowed eyes like chips of glass caught on the brilliant red of the flames consuming the sandstone in all directions. “The rest stay and fight to the death. What they were to us once – if anything at all - means nothing now. They will not surrender or negotiate, and we cannot escape. Push them back…regardless of the cost. This is a matter of survival.” As though it had ever been anything more. They fumble, hesitate, eyes wide with frenzy and panic – and she meets it with winter ice. “Did you hear me? Move!” They are gone, then, like shadows down the stairs, and she is quick to follow them, without even a backwards glance to the desert that is no longer her home; her mind is consumed with red. They would have their reckoning? Very well. If the Davke had once survived their destruction, so, too, would the Kingdom of Day. For your gluttony, I swear by the sun our master to give you more blood than you can drink.
also, last line is a play on a quote attributed to Queen Tomyris ( @)
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
03-05-2018, 12:46 AM - This post was last modified: 03-29-2018, 08:46 PM by Seraphina
It was almost difficult to fathom, that those years of bitter hatred and blame would come to a culmination, that they were coming to culmination right now. He thought of Zolin's arrogant fingers trailing down his spine, every curse bestowed upon him, every unwelcome touch... any dignity he'd had stripped away for what?
It didn't matter to him that the Solterran people below had not committed the crimes themselves — what had they done to stop them? What had they done to repair the damage their boy-King had done?
Nothing.
They had continued on with their lives, relieved that it hadn't been them in chains. He had never respected the regime, whether it was Maxence or Seraphina on the throne — they were the same. What had they done to repair the cracks created so long ago? Maxence was a military commander, not a King. Seraphina... well, Lorc had given up on any Sovereign but the Queen he had pledged himself to. The only one willing to do something.
The one that had set him free.
So he stood beside her now, as he always would — a svelte, razor-cut figure clothed in silver and gold. In a rare show of practicality he had braided his long, silky locks back into a single, raised ridge along his slim neck and he wore elegant gold makeup to turn his white brow aurelian. Two long, wicked knives were strapped to his sides, gleaming in the heat. He and Avdotya shared a glance, a moment in time that they had both longed for, been patient for.
The time was nigh.
Her voice rang out over their horde, the desert singing underneath their hooves as finally, finally — the Davke set upon the cages of the Solterran government.
Lorca kept ahead of the mob, a slick streak of stainless steel, too elegant, too fine amidst the mess of bodies and blood. When they hit there was nothing but the sound of screams — some excited and fierce, others of terror. He headed straight toward the library, ready to gather the history of their peoples execution — so that their suffering would be immortalised, remembered.
But it was burning.
Lorca snarled, his face limned with savage beauty as he took in the mess of flame and ash, the embers floating through the arid air.
No matter. They would rewrite their history, and include the parts that had been thoughtfully left out by the delicate scholars. Burning the library... his lip peeled — it must have been Seraphina, warrior as she was. Nobody else would have blasphemed against knowledge and history, only a warrior who gave little thought to the information that would be lost to the desert sands forever.
There were bodies around — Davke and otherwise, but Lorca paid them no mind but to step delicately over them, heading toward the thickest bloodshed. He would not stand idle while Solterrans murdered his brothers and sisters again.
He moved like water, fluid and sinuous as his knives slicked free. Faster, faster — and then he was in the throng, his knives catching the light as much as his argent body did, dancing and flowing even as crimson began to stain him. Flecks first, then more and more, dirt and dust coating him so that there was no sign of the elegant, intelligent man he had been — there was only a savage, grim beauty.
he had fallen asleep at the books again. In the little room with the single window, where he practices his letters like a child. In the shameful, frustrating repetition of the letter S, always crooked in one way or another, sleep found him and dragged him under.
He does not wake when the fighting first starts, because the sounds outside the room aren't so different from the sounds in his dreams. Dark dreams of shadows brawling beneath the silver moon, slender and sharp as a sickle.
But eventually the smoke trickles in through the window, a smell he knows all too well. A smell that ignites a fear and pain he can't outrun, not even after years and leagues of time and space. He opens his eyes and his heart is already racing, that anxious feeling is crawling out of his belly like a hundred spiders.
The smell of burning flesh is what tips him over the edge. It rips him apart from the inside, from the very deepest part of him. From the place where unwanted memories rest. He wants to run. Gods he wants to run, every instinct is telling him to flee the flames and chaos leave this damned castle to its bloody, angry death. The fear tells him this is not where you belong and that message rings true in every inch of his being.
But beneath the dark knot of fear, deeper even than those repressed memories, something else rises. And he finds himself pushing toward the fighting instead of away from it.
It is rage.
(Seraphina, he thinks suddenly)
It has been building for years now, fermenting in that deep down place.
(Rhoswen)
It has been hungry, downright famished, scratching at the door persistently. Driving him mad. That heavy, heavy black door is ripped open in his whirlwind of fear, and out flies rage. Beautiful, devastating Rage.
(Vadim)
He needs no weapon but tooth and hoof and body; prickling white-hot with rage, he surges forward. Lunging, biting, kicking. He reaches for jelly-tender eyes with his teeth and pummels into bellies with his chest like a battering ram. He draws a knife from the throat of a fallen Solterran and wields it- he is not graceful with his telepathy but it is so much easier to draw blood this way, and isn't that what they wanted? All this in silence, no screaming or yelling or the taunting that fools are so fond of.
(Bexley)
Eik's rage only grows to see those he thought as allies fighting against the court-- there is nothing he detests more than a liar. He keeps an eye out for those he knows, and especially those he considers friends. But it is all smoke and blood and madness, straight from his dreams and memories. He might be dreaming still, for all the sense this makes.
(Saoirse)
But in his dreams the blood doesn't feel like this. It makes him realize he is bleeding already. He continues to fight regardless, the fear gone now, replaced by the sinking sense that he might die, today, for a place he didn't care much for at all.
- - - words and words
E I K and sand and silence
blah idek. Feel free to attack him, but no broken bones or death please :)
He knew better than to doubt the Triennial, which had even said that Avdotya was deceitful. It knew better than him, it always had.. but he never thought that the mare would end up attempting to murder the majority of Solterra for something these residents did not do. She was ruthless, but he hardly expected her to be stupid.
And now, he was left here, caught in between. He had few loyalties to Solterra, if he was honest... but he did not have another place to go in Novus, let alone outside of Novus. Denocte was certainly out of the question, and he knew too few people in Terrastella and Delumine to tell if that was a considerable option for him. And he hardly had any loyalties to the Davke - what little he knew of them. All in all, a sour taste was left in his mouth, fermenting and disgusting and aggravating.
So he stood, atop a small outcropping to the south of the Court, watching everything unfold. This was not his fight - not today, probably not tomorrow even.
And just as he was about to turn away and head towards the canyons where he spent most of his time, he saw something... something black and white. Ears twitched up hastily, and his eyes strained to see if it was what he thought it was...
And it was. It was his son, Siavax.
A knot roiled in his gut. What was the colt doing there? Let alone in the middle of a massive, bloody uprising? And why was he just standing there?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Triennial eye snapped open in that split second, frantically flitting every which way - until it, too, locked on Tor's young progeny.
He will-- not make--.. it came the hiss.
"Damn it all," came the snarl from the Warden's lips, and haunches coiled tight as he lunged off of his perch. Hooves carried him swiftly across the land, toward the Court and where his son stood, the beat of his hooves sounding like a wardrum in his ears.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The minutes it took him to cross the patchy land felt like hours. He nearly lost his footing as he careened around a corner of one of the walls, colliding with a body of someone unknown, toppling them to the ground. He had hardly the time to figure out if they were friend or foe, his eyes searching for only one thing: Siavax.
And eventually, his eyes settled on him - scared stiff among the assailants, as one stood in front of him, anger and vengeance slathered across their features.
Sweat soaked his hide as hooves dug into the ground and shoved off, muscles straining to push him faster towards the two. There was some semblance of morality in his actions, a small flicker that would astound most - and even himself, if he was honest.
"SIAVAX!" came the bellow, hoarse and deep. "RUN-" was the command, seconds before Tor slammed into the would-be assailant head-on. Sweat-soaked skin met skin as the Warden and the unknown attacker clashed, teeth and anger and rage boiling over. Tor felt his mouth flood with the other's blood - maybe his own, as well - even as the other's hooves and teeth ripped into his own skin. But the Warden did not stop. Not until the other found a moment of relief between the attacks, and took that moment to flit away from the Warden.. maybe to go and lick his wounds, maybe to prey on someone more easily taken advantage of.
Tor did not care anymore - for the second the other was gone from his sight, the Warden turned to his son. Not waiting, not caring that the young boy was nearly paralyzed in fright, Tor crossed behind him, pressed the bloody and sweat-soaked side of his barrel against the back of his son's haunches. He shoved the young boy, who stumbled forward and then looked back at his father, confusion blurring his features.
The massive beast of a stallion crossed to his son's side, body pressed alongside the smaller boy's frame as he forced him forward and away from the fray. "I said GO," he snarled, his voice low.
It was only then that he would see young Siavax's mind snap-to, and the boy would listen to him. It was only then that Tor was able to lead him away from the blood-soaked sand of the Court, towards the sands of the Mors that have never seemed so inviting.
But it was his father's, and here he was, on one of his many fruitless trips. Except now, he was surrounded by anger and bloodshed and wrath and...
He hardly ever trekked here for the sake of his father anymore, but rather for another unfortunate soul that often found himself tangled in the sandstorm: Tamran. The quiet and withdrawn little healer that had touched a dying part of his soul, touched a part of his humanity he thought he had lost.
He felt his heart in his chest. Felt the pulse of blood through his veins, felt his chest tighten and muscles seize. Where is he? Is he okay? blasted through his mind. What is happening? Why is this happening? like a whirlwind.
The young boy was locked in place, his hooves hardly able to move, as bodies rushed all around him. As blood sprayed at his feet and coated his ankles, as screams and howls and roars deafened his eardrums, as the smell of sweat and copper burned his nostrils.
Heart beat against his chest like a wardrum, thrumming against his sternum like a frantic, trapped bird. Innocent blue eyes darted from body to body - he couldn't tell who they were or .. which side was which. Were there two sides? Why were there two sides? What was going on? What-
Then it happened. Someone saw the helpless young creature, just standing there amidst the fray... and it was not someone with right intentions. Solterran or Davke, Siavax would never know - he hardly knew any of these faces to begin with. All he knew was that the bloodlust that clouded their eyes was daunting, and he felt his own soul crack when their gazes met.
But he was helpless to stop them - helpless as their hooves ground into the dirt with intention, their head snaked low and muscles tense. Those innocent blues stared, wide and white-rimmed, as his breath hitched. Muscles quaked just enough for his limbs to slowly step back, head raised in fright. He was taken too off-guard to allow himself to be angry, for he knew naught what was even happening as it whirled around him.
All he knew was his eyes clenched tight as the other lunged for him.
Just in time to see his father slam into the other who lunged at him - just in time to see blood and teeth and skin and flesh and wounds. His breath caught in his throat, and the time it took his father to fight the assailant felt like bloody hours. Sia felt the copper and sweat build up in his nostrils, overwhelming his senses all over again... and in a split second, it was done.
The assailant turned and ran, and Tor's gaze - his father's gaze - was on him. The much larger stallion shoved Sia from behind, and he stumbled forward, limbs shaky and breath still hanging in his throat, head whipping around to stare back at the plum and white stallion.. it was only when the snarl bit his ears -- I said GO -- that he felt himself snap out of it. The screams had not died down, the bellows and roars still pierced the air - but he knew, for once, his father was trying to do something relatively noble.
And so they ran, side by side, away from the fray and away from the Court. Sia wondered why his father did not stay to fight... but he felt like he knew the answer. Tor was hardly attached to anyone - hell, Siavax himself hardly knew anything about the Warden... his father. It wouldn't surprise the young boy if his father held little true allegiance or loyalty to Solterra.
Those thoughts clouded his mind as he felt his father's heavy hoofbeats beside his own, felt the sand kick up at their heels and cling to their hides. He didn't know where they were going - all he knew was they were going away from Solterra.
He hadn’t gone back to Delumine after his fight with the smiling wolf. No, he had followed the wind, allowing it to guide him from behind, whispering in his ear as to which direction he should go.
North and east.
The soft, gopher-hole-ridden dirt of the battlefields gave way to deep sand scorching his fetlocks, consuming his hooves. But the wind called him onwards: he would not allow the resistance of the sand to stop him.
He wasn’t sure how long he walked before he saw the steeple of the Day Court rising from the dunes; heard the screams of a thousand people under siege. The city sprawled out across the desert sand, marked red not with sandstone.
But with blood.
Perhaps he sound have turned around then and returned to the wildflower fields of the Dawn Court, like any other sane man might do. But sense abandoned him, his fight response from mere hours earlier kicking back in and driving him forward, a streak of silver upon the golden desert sands.
Aion saw the knife coming at him from the corner of his eye: he twisted and turned, both the weapon and the body holding it sailing past him by an inch. Hr wasted no time, delivering a forceful kick directly to his attacker’s ribs. The attack was clean, precise, focused: and he struck true. Bones gave way beneath his hooves, an audible crack! resounding through the air.
But Aion did not smile. He stole the knife from his attacker’s teeth, brandishing it within his telekinetic grip, and continued on.
He paid no mind to the bodies littering the ground—they were all lifeless and unmoving, their eyes dull and unseeing. He would be of no help to them now, to those who were already gone. But the dust had not yet settled up ahead, and it was there that the feathered man ventured. The ground ran red beneath his hooves, wet with blood and sloshing with every step. ’I hope not everyone has bled out already…’
Though he supposed if they had, his skills would be unneeded and he could leave this desert for good. But enough of that.
@anyone who wants to play with this grump
”are you still talking?”
It was all over her, dripping down her feathers and soaking her wine red pelt a gory shade of crimson. She could taste it in her mouth, sticking against her tongue like ash: the metallic, acrid taste of death.
But it was not her own. It never was.
The soldier’s wide, gaping eyes made him look scarcely a man – just a boy – as Cyrene pressed a fresh rag against the weeping gash that spanned from shoulder to stomach along his trembling sides. “Can you hear me?” she asked, grimacing as he replied with a wheezing cough that stained the bandage she’d applied all the way through.
The spear had missed his lung, but it was lodged too deeply in his side for her to remove safely. Yet each second she hesitated was another subtracted from his life – he was losing too much blood. Not another. I will not lose another.
Quickly, Cyrene pulled out more bandages from her bloodstained satchel as she poured a small vial of green liquid down his throat. One of her mother’s recipes – it would keep him alive, for now. “What I just gave you will stem the blood loss, and ease the pain. But I will have to move you,” she spoke to him, as she wiped the sweat from her brow with a weary wing. “Can you try and stand? What is your name, soldier?” She had to keep him talking, had to keep him conscious. He could not succumb to the darkness, not yet.
How many had she lost? How many had she saved? It didn’t matter. The answer would always be too many, and not enough. Their lives would always slip from her grasp no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she begged for them to stay. Mamá. Papá. Cygnus. Don’t leave me.
Again and again and again, all they did was die.
“You, over there. What are you doing?” dull leonine eyes narrowed as Cyrene fixed her gaze upon a young healer, one of the few they'd brought from Terrastella, hovering motionless over the slashed body of an armor-clad boy. Davke or Solterran – she couldn’t tell. What difference did it make? In a sea of swollen bodies, the dead held no more loyalties.
Her tone was eerily soft as she appraised the shaking healer with a sigh. “He is dead. There is nothing more you can do. But him,” she murmured, tipping her head towards the soldier leaning heavily against her withers. “He is alive. It is not too late for him. Please, escort this man to the infirmary and rest while you're there. It will be a long night.”
Though the battle raged in another part of the city now, it was far from over. If it would ever be over; the Davke attack was only the beginning, and she would be a fool to assume otherwise. How was it possible that she had arrived with Florentine to a shining, bustling Solterra only hours before? One moment, Day and Dusk had sealed their alliance with the curling signatures of two radiant queens. And the next – blood had been spilled before the ink had even dried.
Never had Cyrene imagined she would be saving lives, and losing them, in carnage so horrifying again. Not so soon. Not when she could barely stomach the smell of smoke because it reminded her of the corpses she had burned like kindling, breathing in their ashes until she had coughed nothing but black tar for days.
Not when all she wanted to do, was curl in a ball while Cassandra smoothed her hair and hummed melodies she no longer remembered the words of.
But there was no time for the luxury of grief. No time, no time.
I'll grieve when I'm dead.
"speech" | @everyone | notes: cy's cleaning up after all of y'all
The heart remembers things that the body does not want. Violence, for example, and love.
Bexley is attacked by both as she sleeps. The silver bruise of her body heaves and sweats in sleep, and deep in the corner of her dark, listless brain, memories rise of what the heart cannot forget.
The cool, consistent weight of gold tugging down at the back of her neck; a bone-saw, sharp and serrated, inlaid with pearl to nick at each joint; cake and pastries that become guilt and sawdust in the mouth; the collarbone country, dead yellow grass, something that has forgotten it once was beautiful, which the sun cracks and dusts and makes red with blood. Blood, and the utter magic of it. Blood in droplets and rivers, blood staining the black dirt, blood within the body, blood outside the body, seeping from a wound to water the earth, showing fluorescent against the stark white of a naked skull which has never before seen light it did not make itself. All of this and more lives in the back of Bexley’s head, and it haunts her as she sleeps.
Pretty on by, says the devil in the backdrop of each dream. Just pretty on by, princess, and don’t worry about anyone else. This is wrong. This feels very, very wrong. Unconsciously, Bexley’s ear flicks at the muted sound of screams floating through her frost-glass window. Pretty on by, and what good has that ever done her. A breath hitches in her throat. The devil tries harder to keep her sated. Opal? Diamond? What do you want? Good drugs? Porcelain? I’ll make it happen, baby.
And faintly, there is the smell of smoke, wafting under the doorway, and Bexley’s mouth twitches.
A wedding. A funeral. A bottle of liquor. A God? A lover? A -
And unmuted becomes the smell of blood, and the iron courses onto her tongue, and the smoke thickens, leaving corpse-smell in those almost white curls, and then it is too much, in concert, to ignore: Bexley slams to wakefulness, petrified and confused.
The cacophonous sound of war comes like unpracticed music through the sandstone walls. Metal against metal, skin against skin, hoof to bone, teeth to flesh. And the interrupted screaming, and sounds of pain, smattering what used to be clean air. Bexley’s ears flatten to her head. Despite the bruises on her side and the stinging, still-crusting gash across her face, she is awake and alert in a matter of seconds, not bothering for a moment to gather her wits before she takes off streaking down the tower steps toward the sounds and smells of gore.
As soon as she steps foot into the courtyard, the pain that courses through her body is immediately forgotten.
The apocalypse is descended. Ichor salts the earth; red light floods over broken sandstone; bodies stir and flail and finally go still in the sand. Bexley’s breath hitches in the curve of her throat. There is a season for everything, she realizes, even dying - and in Solterra, every season is for dying. Her heart stutters, flickers, screams electricity. A young soldier crashes to the ground not ten yards away from her, and Bex flinches hard until she realizes he’s a Davke, his mouth covered with the blood of her friends and family, his silver eyes wild with the lust for anger, and rage pools into each corner of her body, violent and overwhelming.
Bexley trembles with absolute fury. Blackness seeps into the edges of her vision, knifes deep into her heart. With elegant, leonine strides, she moves across the blood-stained sand, so quickly she becomes just an aureate flash, standing within moments over the bruise-battered face of the Davke, who’s still scrambling to get to his feet. She presses the curve of an ivory hoof to his cheek, pins him down. She can see the way he struggles for breath - nostrils flaring, chest heaving, teeth grit inside his jaw - armor cleaved like butter across the side of his neck. Heat overwhelms every inch of her skin, burns a hole into the front of her brain. The boy is squirming now, his blood seeping from her hoof print, desperate to wriggle away, almost looks as if he’s going to beg, but he doesn’t, and Bexley hates him for it.
Why don’t you beg? she coos, leaning close enough that she can see the whites of his eyes, the sweat that gleams on his brow. He smells like fear. And drying blood. Little boy. Yet she can’t be much older than he is.
Long live the Davke, the boy snarls back at her, and Bexley bares her teeth at him, lifts her head away, and in one fell stroke she brings her hoof down into the ivory dip of his skull so cleanly, so heavily, that he does not even have time to scream. Blood and gold, head ringing with gut-lust and war, Bexley turns away from the mutilated corpse and goes streaking into the midst of the fray, passing bodies she knows, bodies she doesn’t, and letting loose an untamed scream of grief.
She joined them as they encroached upon the crown's sandstone doorstep, her hooves driving into the sand with practiced ease as she so fluidly melted into the crowd. She was but another face in a sea of others, an unknown that neither side would question when her allegiance came into question; while it rang true that Makeda would face the guillotine before she ever acknowledged some false silver Queen, in this hour she had already determined that she was but a poorly Day Court damsel.
The girl peeled away from her Davke horde the moment they had torn through the palace doors, those clever violet eyes honing in on a perfect nook within which she would crumple into a helpless young maiden. On her knees, Makeda cried out, feigned terror burning brightly on her delicate face while tears stained her cheeks... and oh, like moths to a flickering flame did they come. Two Solterran guards readily rushed to her aid, urging her to her hooves and placing her safely between their bodies as they made for the doors from which she had only just broken into. "You will be safe out here," she was assured, her legs collapsing beneath her and barrel now kissing the warm sand. Makeda looked up at them, her eyes still wet with crocodile tears. "I will," she agreed, much to their surprise, though the prior sweetness of her voice had all but vanished, "but you won't."
The Davke fighter sprung from place in the sand below, driving the pointed tip of a horn directly into the throat of one of her saviours. She left barely a second for him to blink, much less react, and before the stallion could think to retaliate, he was a limp body on the ground. Thus, her attention spun to the second guard: he had already drawn his blade, its metal glinting in the sunlight and all too ready to be run clean across her neck. Makeda laughed, a serpent's smile taking to her lips. "Come on, sweets, I know you wanted me all to yourself." That was all it took to goad him into attacking, a blind lunge that she danced away from with ease- save for the bloodied knick he managed to make upon her hindquarters. It drew a vicious response, her coy hop and skip approach suddenly exploding into an all out assault.
She leapt around his rump, grabbing at his stifle and forcing him to the sand. The second he was down, Makeda threw herself into a half-rear, aiming both hooves for the stallion's hock. A sickening crack caressed her ears, his cries of pain soon following, but she did not seek the final blow. Instead, Makeda waited, leaving him to writhe in his pain until the familiar screech of her bonded signaled his arrival and she sashayed to his face. "I've got a special treat for you." The girl whispered, barely avoiding his snapping teeth.
Gazini arrived seconds later, the weight of his body hitting the sand creating a cloud of dust that left Makeda and her new friend coughing as the sand tickled their lungs. "I've got you a snack, my friend." She beamed up at him, rather proud of her gifts for her dragon companion.
But she did not have time to linger... she had blood to collect.
